


Whatever It Is I Am Changing Into

by boombangbing



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:05:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8248118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: It was a sin to take advantage of the weak.





	

Kate preferred Seth when he was high. It was a terrible thing to think, to take pleasure in his vice, but he was just easier to get along with after he got a needle in his vein, even if sometimes 'easier' just meant 'unconscious'. 

He'd been okay the first few days: they'd driven for twenty hours straight, only stopping to use the restroom and get food to eat in the car. Seth had wiped his greasy fingers on the expensive leather upholstery of the corvette and thrown the paper bag out of the window.

“Fuck rich people,” he said, and grinned when she laughed.

They stopped on the second day and sold the car for motel money and a little extra. Corvettes weren't cheap, but with grease stains on the seats and no title, they only got twenty eight thousand pesos.

“Twenty eight _thousand_?” she hissed when the guy drove off in his new car and left Seth behind with a sour look on his face.

“That's fifteen hundred bucks to you and me, kid,” Seth drawled. “Won't last long.”

The first room was disgusting, but there was a bed and coming down off the massive adrenaline high of the Titty Twister had sucked her dry. She slept like a rock all day and woke to find Seth peering out the window with a sharpened piece of wood in his hand. That became a regular sight over the next few weeks, his back curved like a question mark, his eyes sinking behind dark bags.

“Maybe you should get some sleeping pills,” she said while she flipped channels. Seth didn't like going out after dark and, truth be told, neither did she, but it didn't leave much in the way of entertainment. Seth stared back at her. “If you can't sleep, I mean. You know, like over the counter stuff?”

She blinked away the memory of her Twister vision.

Seth kept on looking at her for a moment that stretched long, then got up and grabbed his bag, striding towards the door.

“Seth?” she called after him. “Pick me up a soda?”

He didn't return until hours later, waking her up with the twin sounds of the door slamming shut and a can of soda landing on the mattress next to her. She'd barely startled out of sleep when he crossed to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. It was four am, according to the clock, and there were infomercials playing on the TV across the room. 

She wiped at her eyes and called out, “Seth?”

He grunted something back through the door and she fell back against her pillow with a sigh. It was like wading through mud trying to talk to him now and get anything other than grunts or defensive, monosyllabic replies. Whatever, that was his business, and it was also his business what he was doing out until the early hours. If he was having sex, it was better he was doing it out there rather than in the twin bed next to her.

She was almost back to sleep when the bathroom door opened, bathing the room in yellow light. When the light didn't go off again, she opened her eyes with a reprimand that died on her tongue as she watched Seth stumble over to his bed and go down like a ton of bricks. Maybe he'd taken her advice, but sleeping pills shouldn't have laid him out as quick as that and the memory of her mother went like a cold shock through her. She crossed the gap between their beds in a second and shook his shoulder, but he was out cold, breathing so shallowly that she had to watch him for several seconds before his chest inflated some.

She looked back towards the bathroom and squinted at the collection of items on the counter top, then got up to investigate. She may have been a virginal little preacher's daughter but when she was stood looking down at the burnt spoon, lighter, and needle, it didn't take her long to figure out what he'd done to himself. There were a few drops of blood on the counter and the tiled floor, and the needle was bloody too; she didn't dare touch it, so she just turned the light out and firmly closed the door.

She didn't get any more sleep that night, taking over Seth's usual role of staring blankly at the TV. She didn't know what a drug overdose looked like or how she would help him, but she didn't feel like she could leave him to it tonight. It took five hours for him to come round again, at which point he started coughing and flopped onto his side like a struggling fish. The coughing only got worse, to the point where he started to throw up a little. She hurried to the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel, then came back in and dropped down on the bed beside him, a few inches away from the puddle of mostly spit that he'd brought up.

“Breathe,” she said, clamping the towel over his mouth with one hand. He tipped more onto his side, curling up so that his knees pressed into the small of her back, and she resisted the urge to rest her other hand in his hair as he shook. She settled for patting his shoulder awkwardly and eventually he closed his hand over hers around the towel and started to sit up. His hand wasn't really that much larger than hers, but his fingers were thick and his skin was rough and it made her body hum with strange energy.

She withdrew her hand gently and he sat up all the way, hunching his shoulders in with a groan.

“Sorry,” he murmured, muffled by the towel. His eyebrows scrunched together and he lowered the towel before smiling sheepishly at her. It was the most open expression she'd seen on his face since she asked him if he wanted company.

“So, um, was that... crack?” She knew she sounded like a kid stumbling over the terminology, but Seth just smiled a little.

“Heroin,” he said, and wiped at his face with the towel.

“Oh. Where did you... get that?”

He shrugged. “It's not hard to find if you know where to look.”

“Oh,” she repeated. “Well, you left all your, um, paraphernalia in the bathroom.”

He looked at the open door, then back at her. “You didn't touch anything, right?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, good, I'll clean it up,” he said, and braced his hands on the mattress to push himself up. He stumbled as he stood, bringing a hand down hard on the night stand. “Jesus, that was stronger than I thought,” he muttered to himself.

It was only after he was in the bathroom with the door closed that it occurred to her that he must have spent the last of their car money on the drugs.

That turned out to be a regular thing too; any time they got some money, a third of it went straight to some sketchy dealer in a _tiendita_ or at the back of a bar. They got into fights about that, how they were struggling to pay for motel rooms while he had a needle in his arm every other night. She hated that he couldn't keep his shit together without the drugs and she hated living on gas station food, but he was always sorry the next day and nicer to her than usual. Sometimes he bought her little things – nothing special, just soda or candy bars or pens – but she liked it. Sometimes she wondered if she was like the women that her father would counsel – 'my man beats me something awful but he's so sweet the next day'.

Not that Seth was _her man_ , of course.

Anyhow, they could rub along just fine when he was getting high. She made him shoot up in the bedroom because she hated having to edge around needles in the bathroom when she was trying to do her teeth and he told her not to pray over him while he was passed out. She watched him tie off his forearm and prod for a vein, then fall into his bed with a dopey expression on his face. Sometimes she left him to it, sometimes she watched to make sure he didn't choke to death on his own vomit.

There was a time she would have prayed for him, for his soul and for him to find the strength to stay clean. There had been 'unfortunate souls' who visited the church and asked for forgiveness, and her parents had been involved with local rehabilitation centres. She'd seen the men and women, out on the street begging, sitting in a far pew in their tattered clothes. She prayed for them and was sure God would take care of them if only they opened their hearts to Him.

Some of her friends in the church found their religion a prison; a prison of virginity, of expectation and familial duty, but Kate, she never did. Her faith gave her certainty, made her feel confident in her path. She didn't feel pressure from her father to be a good girl because she _was_ a good girl, and she knew that a little sucking face in the back of the church didn't change that. Such unshakeable faith made her feel right with the world.

It seemed so arrogant and childish now, to think that she'd be saved because she prayed the best and believed the hardest. She and her whole family had been forsaken, despite how hard they'd tried to be perfect in God's eyes.

They had a dry couple of weeks two months in. Seth tried to turn over a convenience store while Kate waited in the car, and got a shotgun blast next to his ear for his trouble. He raced out to the car with only a bag of chips, which she guessed was better than nothing since she hadn't eaten in a day, but it still only left them with a couple of thousand pesos to get by on. 

Seth looked worse by the day, sweaty and pale, and she took the last of their money and hid it from him, which drove him crazy. She kept the notes rolled up in an old tampon wrapper and put it in her bag. That worked for a few days, until she went for a shower and came back out to find him rifling through her things.

“Seth...” she said.

“You thought I'd be too scared to touch a fucking tampon?” he said, pulling out the wrapper. He threw her bag back onto the bed and turned towards the door.

She drew her robe tighter around herself and followed him across the room. “Seth! We need that money!”

“This is _my_ money,” he growled, without turning to face her.

On the desk to her left was one of Seth's guns; she grabbed it without a second thought and levelled it at his back. “Stop.”

He stopped with his hand on the door handle and looked over his shoulder. He didn't look surprised to see her pointing a gun at him, let alone scared. “Do it,” he said, in a strange, flat voice. His hand with the money in it was shaking, while hers remained steady.

She lowered the gun with a sigh. “I need to eat, even if you don't,” she said softly and he walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

She knew she needed to leave him behind. When she'd stepped out of the Twister, she felt she couldn't survive alone, without her father and brother, in a foreign country, with a knowledge of evil no one should have to face, but now she knew different. She knew she could live – maybe not thrive, but live – on her own, and she was sure she could make money the same way Seth could, without the burden of a growing addiction to addle her mind and break down her body. She knew that Seth was only holding her back. The question now was whether she should leave without a word or break the news to him. She wasn't sure he'd care either way.

He came back a few hours later, his return announced by the erratic sound of a key being scraped across the wooden door. He was struggling to unlock it, the state he was in, but she didn't get up to help, she just sat on her bed with her legs tucked under herself and watched the show. He managed to get in a minute later and sloped inside with a brown bag and a bottle of booze clutched in one hand. He looked worse than ever.

She watched him as he closed the door, but he didn't have anything to say to her. She looked back down at her Culebra bible, ignoring the hesitant steps coming towards her. She wasn't sure that he wouldn't hurt her, but she knew she didn't stand much chance against him in such close quarters.

The brown bag dropped in her lap, followed by a crumbled roll of money. She picked the money up first and counted through it – it looked like most of it was still there – then peered into the bag. Gorditas with rice and beans. It smelt delicious and her stomach started to growl.

She looked up at him with a smile.

“Don't look at me like that,” he said, and turned towards his bed. “Can't get shit with money like that.”

“Well, thanks all the same,” she said, as he popped his bottle open and started drinking.

They got out of their rut a few days later, if only by luck; a couple of high rollers with nice jewellery and flashy watches stumbled out of a casino and Seth pressed his gun to the guy's back and did the best impression of a highway robber he could while half way wasted on tequila. He directed Kate to strip them of all their cash and expensive accessories and she didn't have any way to justify it to herself, like it was a corrupt bank that foreclosed on innocent families or a seedy convenience store run by a guy who stared at her breasts. These people were just a terrified couple who'd had the misfortune to run into a drug addict bank robber and his teenage moll (as far as they were concerned, anyhow). Still, she did it and they didn't put up any fight at all, running as fast as they could when Seth pulled the gun away.

For their trouble, they got a Rolex watch, a handful of jewellery that looked diamond encrusted to her (she'd passed over the woman's wedding rings and had given her what she hoped was a comforting smile – she doubted it was any comfort), an iPhone, and an envelope with the casino's name printed on it, at least one hundred thousand pesos inside. 

Seth held the gun loosely in his grip while she took stock of it all. He looked edgy and distant, ready for his next high. From her own vague research on the internet, she was pretty sure that withdrawal only lasted two to three days, and he was a few days past that since he'd used up his last little bit, but she figured addiction was mainly mental, not physical. Mentally, Seth was a wreck.

The jewellery, phone, and watch needed to be fenced immediately, so she handed them over to him, plus a third of the money.

“I'll see you back at the motel,” she said. Seth looked at her with glassy eyes, then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

It was the early hours of the morning before she saw him again. She was half asleep and didn't get up when he turned a lamp on, just lay on her side and watched him heat the rock of heroin and get the needle ready. It took him longer than usual because his hands were quivering so much. If he tried inject himself with those hands, he was liable to hit an artery and kill himself.

She pushed her covers back with a sigh and sat up. Seth's eyes flicked to her nervously.

“Sit down on your bed,” she said, and by some miracle he did, laying the needle down carefully on the desk and shuffling across the room. She got up and retrieved it, along with the piece of rubber piping he used to tie his forearm off with. She'd never done this before, but she'd had blood taken a couple of times and remembered that the nurses got her to make a fist and then smacked the vein at the crook of her elbow lightly. Seth closed his hand to a fist without prompting and she prodded his arm a little, not at all sure she was doing it right. He had bruises and little blood spots all around the area, but he didn't comment on her technique, and after a while, she could feel a bulging vein beneath his skin. She'd never injected anything into anyone before, but she'd had a friend in middle school who was diabetic and gave herself insulin shots. This was absolutely nothing like that.

She pressed the needle in, pushing past the brief resistance, and hoped for the best as she pushed the plunger down. As the liquid slid into his vein, he rolled his head back and fell against the pillows. She pulled the needle back out and wiped the spot clean with a tissue while he smiled up at her like she'd hung the moon. She patted his arm and returned the needle to the table before going to the bathroom to pee. Her hands were still steady, incredibly; she wondered what that said about her.

When she came back into the bedroom, she went to the desk to switch off the lamp and found Seth watching her with heavily lidded eyes. His pupils had shrunk down to pinpricks like they always did.

“Hey,” she said quietly, “you're normally out by now.”

“Mm,” he said, and dragged his tongue along his bottom lip slowly. “Think I got it less strong.”

She nodded and left the lamp on, coming back to him again. He smiled, his whole face lighting up like a kid's, and smacked his lips a couple of times.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Great,” he said, drawing the word out.

“What's it feel like?”

He blinked at her a couple of times, his mouth slightly open, before answering. “It's like... peaceful. Like nothing exists any more.” He spoke slowly, slurring his words together. It was a change from his regular way of talking, half-baked rants and lots of aggression. She knew he thought his little speeches scared the people he turned over, and they did, but not because he impressed upon them how tough and threatening he was; it was simply because he came across like a crazy person half the time.

She sat down beside him and he smiled even wider, his eyes vaguely wandering down her body.

“When did you start?” She knew it must have been an old habit, because no one was that handy with needle and lighter the first time, not even hardened criminals.

“Prison.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise and he smiled again. “Lotsa junkies, nothin' else to do.”

“I hadn't thought of it like that,” she said. She wondered how he got on in there without his brother, but she guessed the fact he started using said it all. Said a lot right now, too.

“Mom was a junkie,” he added, unprompted. “Did meth while she was knocked up with Richie. Clean for me, though.”

“Christ,” she said. That explained a lot.

He laughed. “Hey, that's blas—bla—”

“Blasphemy?” she offered.

“Yeaaah,” he said. “You're not s'posed to say that.”

She shrugged and rested her hand over one of his. “I do a lot of things I'm not supposed to. I even tried pot once.” Half a drag and a long coughing fit probably didn't count, but she wasn't telling him that.

“Pot makes me paranoid,” he said, struggling mightily over 'paranoid'.

“You mean, more paranoid?”

He laughed again, sounding so light and happy. She wondered if it was a sin to think that it would be better if he was always like this. Probably; most things were. He turned his hand over in her grip, bringing their palms together, and rubbed his thumb along the side of her hand.

“Tell me somethin',” he mumbled, then fell quiet.

“Like what?”

He tipped his shoulder very slightly up. “Mm, somethin' nice...”

She looked down and pulled her hand away a little. Seth tried very weakly to hold on, but she clicked her tongue at him and brought her other hand up to knead her fingers into his palm. He made a slight groaning sound that set her skin tingling. She ran her thumb over his fingers, where he had a series of calluses that corresponded to holding a gun. She guessed would get them too, if she kept on the way she was going.

“I don't think I have any nice stories any more,” she said, concentrating on massaging his rough palm.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

She shrugged. “It's okay. Okay, how about when I went to Homecoming?”

“Did you dress up like a cupcake?” he asked, his voice filled with wonder.

She laughed and laced her fingers through his. “I guess I did. It was pink with a big tulle skirt and sequins on the bodice. We had to order it from San Angelo, because Bethel is so small. I had a big mum with ribbons and LED lights in it that I made myself.” When he looked at her blankly, she added, “It's like a corsage, but bigger.”

“Ev'rything's bigger in Texas,” he said and laughed.

“I guess so. I was made Homecoming Princess that year.”

He grinned, then bit his lip, which was much thicker than she'd ever thought a man's could be. “Not Queen?”

“I was a junior then. My senior Homecoming would have been a couple of months back.”

Seth blinked at her a few times, his mouth slightly open, but his expression growing serious. His eyes flicked up her face. “Why don't you go home? You ain't the fugi—fugitive.”

“You can't ever go back home, like the book says.”

He frowned up at her, his lips pressed together in a pout. “The Bible?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, there was a book we studied in eighth grade. I don't think you can ever go back to something you had before.” She knew she had to keep going forward, from this point.

Seth was still frowning and she let her hand be guided by impulse, reaching out and pressing her fingertips between his scrunched eyebrows. His eyes slid shut, his mouth and forehead going slack again, and she looked at his dark eyelashes resting against his cheeks, another decidedly unmasculine aspect to his features. She ran the tip of her finger along his brow and he sighed contentedly.

“What about you?” she asked softly.

He sucked his lips into his mouth for moment and licked them before letting them slip out slowly between his teeth. “Mm?”

“Homecoming, did you go?”

“Mm...” He smacked his lips together again. “Prom. She wore... whatever girls wore in... two thousand and... two.”

She brought her other hand up and ran it along the other side of his face; he made a noise low in his throat and she rubbed along his jawline with her thumb. If he was going to prom in 2002, that put him around thirty years old now. She'd never asked him how old he was; it was unspoken between them that the situation they were in was made worse by the decade or so that separated them. Bringing it up would have just put a name to it. She'd turned eighteen a few weeks past, and hadn't said a word about it to him.

It also made this, whatever it was she was doing to him now, even more inappropriate. More inappropriate than taking advantage of someone too stoned to move, maybe. She ran her fingers around and underneath his eyes, along his cheeks, and across his stubble, and he whimpered slightly, opening his mouth wider. She couldn't resist it; she ran her thumb slowly along his bottom lip, dragging the pad through the wetness from him licking it.

“Kate,” he groaned.

She leant over him, letting her hair fall on his chest and face, and slid one of her hands into his hair, gripped it tightly. She preferred his hair longer like this, had since it stated to grow out and he didn't bother to deal with it, and especially now. He squirmed a little – as much as he was able to, she guessed – and dragged his eyes open, though his eyelids still drooped heavily. He was completely helpless in her grip and didn't seem to mind it.

She dragged her thumb back the other way over his lip, her nail catching once or twice on his teeth. He licked his lip, his tongue glancing across her skin, and looked up at her like she was the only person in the world.

She dropped her hand to his jaw, holding his chin gently, and tightened the other in his hair some more, then leaned in and kissed him. Her hair fell like curtains around them, hiding them from sight. His lips were soft and his facial hair ticklish but long enough not to feel like rough stubble. He was groaning against her mouth, the sound settling arousal heavy on her skin, and his mouth moved lazily under hers, letting her do the lion's share of the work.

She moved her hand from his chin to his cheek and deepened the kiss, edging her tongue between his teeth. Seth didn't give her any resistance, letting his mouth be levered open and she did the best she could with it. Her and Kyle's fumbling attempt had been mutually embarrassing and just a little disgusting; she would have persevered with it, but after a few minutes, Kyle had lost his nerve and pulled away. When she tried to get him to put his hands somewhere other than feather light touches on her shoulders, he told that he liked her because she was a virtuous girl. Kate didn't think that touching each other meant you had no virtue.

Touching Seth like this, though; that wasn't virtuous at all. The movement of his lips against hers had slowed down until it stopped altogether, she was controlling both sides of the kiss and she wondered if he was even still conscious. She pressed her legs together and felt a tight thrill go through her. 

She pulled back and looked down at him. His eyelashes fluttered and the corners of his mouth tipped up. She stroked his face and sighed, letting her fingers trace his nose and jawline again before reaching for a blanket to cover him. She shook it out and tucked it under his arms.

“I wish you were like this all the time,” she murmured.

Seth breathed out heavily. “Me too,” he said, almost too quiet to be heard, but she caught it and ducked down again to kiss his forehead.

“Good night,” she whispered, knowing he wouldn't remember any of this in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I really liked Seth's drug-induced hallucination in 2x03, yo.


End file.
